Bography of Jonathan Swift and Summary of Gulliver's Travel
This is a short summary of biography of Swift and Gulliver's Travel ﻿The source is Norton Anthology ﻿By Fatemeh Zadyousefi ﻿ Jonathan Swift 1667-1745 Biography of Swift — He was Irish and was born in Dublin — Through generosity of his uncle he was educated in Kilkenny and Trinity College in Dublin — The troubles that followed upon James the second’s abdication and subsequence invasion of Ireland drove Swift to England — Between 1689-1699 he was member of household of his kinsman Sir William temple — About 1696-97 he wrote his powerful satires on corruption of religion and learning — A Tale of The Tub' and ' Battle of the Books '' were published in 1704 — At the age of 32 he returned to Ireland as chaplain to the lord justice, the earl of Berkeley .he had a clear sense of his genius — He devoted his talents to politics and religion — As a clergyman, spirited controversialist and a devoted supporter of the Anglican Church he was hostile to all seemed threaten it: Deists, free-thinker, Roman Catholics, Nonconformists or merely Whig politicians — In 1710 he abandoned Whigs because he opposed their indifference to welfare of the Anglican Church in Ireland and their desire to repeal the test Act which required the holders of offices of state to take the Sacrament according to the Anglican rites ,thus excluding Roman Catholic and dissenters — He was welcomed by Tories and became the most brilliant political journalist of the day — He became dean of St.patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin — He became the leader of Irish resistance to English oppression — Swift is still venerated in Ireland as a national hero — In his epitaph he wrote for his tomb: vigorous defender of liberty — He was not healthy in his adult life — He had gift for friendship. His friendship with Joseph Addison, Alexander, Lord Oxford Pope, John Gay. Mathew Prior and … — He published ''The Journal to Stella ''in 1766 (letters to a girl whom he educated, formed her character and came to love her.) — Swift was striking figure among statesmen of the time, a writer who towered above others by reason of his imagination, mordant wit and emotional intensity — He has been called a misanthrope, a hater of humanity — Gulliver’s Travels has been considered as expression of savage misanthropy — He proclaimed himself as a misanthrope in a letter to Pope, declaring that though he loved individuals, he hated “that animal called man” — He offered a new definition of the species not as ''animal rationale ''but as merely ''animal rationis capax (''an animal capable of reason).He declared it as a great foundation — Swift stated not his hatred of his fellow creatures but his antagonism to the current optimist view that human nature is essentially good — Swift believed that human nature is deeply and permanently flawed and we can do nothing with or for human race until we recognize its moral and intellectual limitations — In his epitaph he spoke about “fierce indignation” that had torn his heart, an indignation that found superb expression in his greatest satires — Swift is master of prose — He defined a good style as “proper words in proper places” — Clear ,simple, concrete diction; uncomplicated syntax; and economy and consciousness of language mark all his writings — The virtues of his prose are those of his poetry, which shocks us with its hard look at the fact s of life and the body — Like prose it is predominantly satiric in purpose, but not without its moment of comedy and light-heartedness, though most often written less to divert that to agitate the reader — Gulliver’s Travel — It is satire — Full of allusion to recent and current events — Its objects are human failings, defective political, economic, and social institutions that they call into being — Swift adopts ancient satirical device: IMAGINARY VOYAGE'' — Narrator is Lamuel Gulliver who is a ship surgeon, a moderately well educated ,man,kindly,resourseful,cheerful,inquiring,patriortic,truthful,and rather unimaginative .In short a reasonably decent example of humanity, with whom a reader can identify — He undertake four voyages all of which end disastrously among” several remote nations of the world” — First Voyage — Gulliver is shipwrecked in the empire of Lilliput — He find himself a giant among them, charmed by their miniature city and amused by toy like prettiness — At the end they prove to be malicious, treacherous , ambitious, vengeful, and cruel — At the end we recognize our likeness to them especially in disproportion between our natural prettiness and our boundless and destructive passion — Second Voyage — Gulliver is abandoned by his shipmates in Brobdingnag .Brobdingnag is land of giants. He first fear that these monster s must be brutes but he recognize that Brobdingnag is a utopia governed by a humane and enlightened prince who is embodiment of moral and political wisdom — When in an interview with the king, Gulliver enlarges glory of England and its political institutions, the king reduces him to resentful silence by asking questions that reveal the difference between what England is and what it out to be. — He find himself as a Lilliputian there. His pride is humbled by his helpless state and his human vanity diminished by the realization that his body must have seemed as disgusting to the Lilliputians as do the bodies of the Brobdingnagians to him. — Third voyage: voyage to Laputa — Swift is attacked by theoretical and speculative reasoning, whether in science or politics or economics — Much of this voyage is allegorical life under administration of the Whig minister, Sir Robert Walpole — Final voyage — Gulliver between race of horses.Houyhnhnms(Hwin-ims) — They live entirely by reason except for a few well-controlled and muted social affections and their slaves the Yahoos whose bodies are obscene caricatures of human body and have no glimmer of reason but are mere creatures of appetite and passion — It is unique in the world of literature ,simple enough for children and complex enough to carry adults beyond its depth — Sheer playfulness of narrative — Swift exercises our sense of vision but beyond that he exorcises our perceptions of meaning. — Things are seldom what they seem. Irony, probing, or corrosive underlies almost every word — The book doesn’t offer any final meaning but a question: WHAT IS HUMAN BEING? — Voyaging through imaginary worlds we try to find ourselves. Are we prideful insects or lords of creation? Brutes or reasonable beings? — In the last voyage, Gulliver hates his own humanity and forgets who he is —